That “four things” meme, then. (Sheesh, I was beginning to think that no-one would ever ask…)

Isn’t it great that Meg (*) has started blogging again more frequently? Quite like old times.
Yay, Spirit of 2001! (See also next post down.)

Anyhoo, in keeping with the Spirit of 2001 theme, Meg has tagged me with a meme. Mark my words, we’ll be doing “Which work of art are you?” quizzes next. (Remember that one? That one was massive.)

Four jobs I’ve had:

Demonstrating “Magic Plastic” balloon kits to gullible tourists, on the ground floor of Hamleys in Regent Street. (Evil stuff. Takes the polish off wooden furniture.)
Loading crates of electrical wholesale equipment into the back of trucks, in a warehouse in Doncaster. Only got the job because my dad knew the boss, and so was roundly despised by all my co-workers. “Character building”, allegedly.
Computer programmer for “Europe’s largest manufacturer of nightie cases“, as the people at the software house proudly told me at the time. Oh yes, all the big names: Poochie, Teddy Beddy Bear, My Little Pony (with free grooming brush), you name it. Management got free samples at Christmas. Jealous doesn’t begin to cover it.
Club DJ, in the days before anyone gave a stuff about seamless beat-mixing. Biggest Choons: The Only Way Is Up (Yazz), Theme From S-Express (S-Express), Big Fun (Inner City), Can You Party (Royal House), Alphabet Street (Prince), Sympathy For The Devil (Laibach).

Four movies I can watch over and over:

Actually, I never do this. But, um, boring answer: Withnail And I, which K has watched over and over.
Groundhog Day: it goes deep.
Breakfast At Tiffany’s: sentimental reasons.
There’s this Falcon Studios one from about ten years ago, where they’re all farm hands… oh come on, do you think I know the titles of these things?

Four places I’ve lived:

Doncaster (I only go back for funerals).
West Berlin (not been back since The Wall came down).
Loughton, Essex (99% certain I’ll never go back there again).
Cambridge (stayed away for years, until my mother moved there).

Four TV shows I love:

Six Feet Under: currently working my way through Series 4 on DVD – but I can only watch it when K isn’t around, because all that DEATH freaks him out.
Shameless: now into its third series, and still right up there with the greats.
Posh Nosh: we haven’t been so comprehensively nailed since…
Frasier: I even liked it when the quality occasionally dipped, which is always a good sign (though Niles and Daphne should NEVER, etc etc).

Four places I’ve been to on holiday:

Vietnam, which I wrote about at some length.
The Azores: one of the planet’s best kept secrets.
Gran Chuffing Canaria, with its fabulous Yumbo Centre. Crapshagtastic!
Lowestoft Harbour. Storm-bound, in a cabin cruiser, for four miserable days, with my perpetually warring seven-strong family/step-family. We got given 50p a day for the amusement arcades, and had to get into a dinghy and row across the yacht basin, every time we wanted to step ashore. Total and utter f**king misery from start to finish, which I attempted to alleviate by listening to the John Peel show, sitting on the chemical toilet, with a mono earpiece in one ear. Yes, I was that desperate.

Four of my favorite dishes:

The pressed meat terrines at The Druid in Birchover: like angels’ kisses, melting on the tongue.
The monkfish at The Bowling Green in Ashbourne: fresh from the Manchester fish market, delicately fragranced in a way that I didn’t know monkfish could be (as when monkfish was trendy during the early 1990s, everyone used to slather it in too much sauce).
The caramelised calves’ livers that were personally cooked for us by Marco Pierre White, on the day of our tenth anniversary. The Apotheosis of Posh Nosh.
Currently, it’s Tung Pau Yuk, which I’ve enjoyed four times in the past month.

Four sites I visit daily:

Four places I would rather be right now:

In the cottage, on the sofa, in front of the fire, with a nice glass of wine.
The Banyan Tree, Phuket: standing in our pool and staring into space, with a faraway smile playing across my lips.
Hangzhou and/or Shanghai, if only it were possible to “pop across” for the weekend. China got under my skin, in a way I hadn’t expected.
London. I wish we got to spend more time there. One day, not so very far in the future, we probably will.

Four bloggers I am tagging:
– with all due apologies if a) they’ve done it before, or b) they hate doing memes: